Act One: It's All Context
by starofoberon
Summary: First in story-cycle, "Jason and Aaron, a Tragedy in Four Acts," an exploration of the complex relationship between these two complex men. This "Act" covers 1997-98 only. Rated for occasional non-graphic, but not fully consensual, slash. Four chapters.
1. The Interview

**This is the opening story in an increasingly angsty cycle, **

**_Jason and Aaron: a Tragedy in Four Acts_. Each "Act" has four scenes.**

**The four "Acts" will be:**

**It's All Context**

**Does Not Play Well With Others**

**A Boy Called "Loser"**

**When the Great Ship Went Down**

Only the fourth act occurs during the period broadcast on the TV series, beginning at S01-E01 and ending at S03-E03.

Scenes II and IV of the first act are an expanded and tweaked version of "Fourth Time for Everything." If you're in search of the larger picture of Gideon/Hotchner back story, "It's All Context" should suit you. If you're looking primarily for slash, go with the original.

**Act One**

**It's All Context**

_**Scene I: The Interview **_

_Jason Gideon_

_December, 1997_

The first new thing he learned about his latest interviewee was that he was a looker.

It was a stone fact. Alberta generally just pointed guys down the hall toward Behavioral Sciences with verbal directions, _turn here, turn there_. Not lookers, though. Prime husband material on the hoof always got a personal escort direct to Dave Rossi's or his office, and Alberta was bringing this one along herself on a very short leash, so to speak.

Jason Gideon, currently highest ranking member of Behavioral Sciences, flipped open the newcomer's CV and reviewed it one last time. On first seeing it, he had read it as a glib hard-sell. Guy seemed to have done everything and done it well. A quick double-check of this Hotchner kid's claims, however, had proved that everything there was literal truth. Second in his class. Assorted academic honors. ROTC, National Guard, JAG corps.

Sucked up by Department of Justice, originally as a warrants specialist, but he wanted to do trial law, prosecution. When someone gave him a break, he ran with it. An impressive conviction rate, considering that he hadn't done the usual primadonna pick-and-choose bit with his cases. They gave him cases, and he tried them. The most surprising aspect that was not his win-loss record, but that he had one, count them, only one reversal on appeal. It was a remarkable record to amass fresh out of the gate.

A knock, solid, but not aggressive. Gideon found that he could tell a lot about a man from the way he knocked on a door.

"Come on in," he said in a distracted tone.

Oh, good gods, yes, Alberta was all but drooling, and he could see why. Tall, dark, slender, intense, but with thick, boyishly goofy hair that he seemed incapable of keeping off his forehead. What Gideon's mother had always called Cherokee cheekbones. Eyelashes a person could practically fall over.

"Agent Hotchner," Gideon said, rising.

"Yes, sir." he offered a firm, dry handshake, a quick and confident smile, then reverted to all business.

_Lord help me, he has dimples, too. Thank god we have no women in the division. Not a one of them would be able to concentrate. We'd be mopping the chairs._

"Thank you, Ms O'Hara," Gideon said to Alberta, who still hung back, covertly devouring Gideon's potential replacement for Tillotson with her eyes. He glared. She sighed and retreated to her receptionist's desk.

When she was gone, he indicated the only other chair in his office. Hotchner sat down and waited quietly. His eyes flickered around the room – not much of a challenge, since it was an eight-by-four office, less than the living space allotted to many felons. [The move to new quarters in the new building in the spring could not happen fast enough for the Behavioral Sciences people] Gideon watched his eyes track with interest. They rested momentarily In all the right spots.

Smart. Observant. Analytical.

Aaron Hotchner, age thirty-one, was a product of the previous year's FBI classes. A little old for a newbie. Perhaps more importantly, he had taken a substantial pay cut to sign on as an agent.

"So tell me," Gideon said, "what's up with you and the Bureau?"

An elegant eyebrow arched. Good god, even with the wedding ring on his finger, this kid would be pure catnip to the ladies. Not particularly graceful. A little stiff, a little buttoned-up, but he radiated energy, power, and good breeding.

"I got hooked," he said. Nice baritone voice. "I was fortunate enough to be tangentially involved with the Shawcross trial, and more recently, a member of the DoJ team that provided advice and support to Canadian prosecutors prior to the Bernardo trial. The more I saw the art of profiling in action, the more I was fascinated. Eventually I was reading everything I could get my hands on and took every course you offered. The next natural step seemed to be to join the FBI."

"You seem attracted to, ah, additional training. You've completed Hostage Rescue Team training through Advanced level."

"Yes, sir."

"Use it much?"

"Not at present, sir, although the negotiating skills generalized into courtroom skills," he replied. "The physical stuff, mainly it prepared me for SWAT training."

"And you took SWAT why?"

Hotchner shrugged. "I wanted to be less of a drawback if I were on scene. It also helped me better to understand the problems and perspectives of law enforcement personnel so I could bring out whatever I needed when they were on the stand."

_Rossi will love this guy; he doesn't split infinitives._

"And you're – intermediate at SWAT?"

"Advanced at the tactical end of it." A modest duck of his head. "I still have a lot to learn on the physical side."

The Bureau, in spite of popularity of movies like _Silence of the Lambs_, was still jammed with hulking physical types. It was principally females who seemed drawn to profiling, hoping to emulate the fictional Agent Starling, although Gideon had yet to find a female who could handle the unrelieved horrors of the job over the long haul. An intellectually-oriented guy who wasn't afraid to get in and mix it up when he had to could be a distinct asset to the division.

Gideon leaned back carefully in his ancient swivel chair. "So, tell me: What can't you do?"

"Professionally?"

"And personally."

His brows knit briefly. "Professionally, I'm a good shot, but hand-to-hand – well, I'm a work in progress. Personally, I can come off as distant and arrogant."

"And are you?"

Hotchner considered that. "I don't warm to people very quickly, so, yes, probably 'distant' has some truth to it. I'd like to think that I'm more confident than I am arrogant, but I may be wrong. Or maybe it's one of those things that fluctuate day to day."

"Anything else?"

"Sir, I'm sure that there's a whole list, but I didn't prep on that question. If you'd like, I can call my wife. She's in charge of cataloging my shortcomings."

_Sense of humor so dry it took me a moment to figure out that he was kidding. Time to take a little shot._

"And you don't think that chirping 'Sir' at me every few seconds doesn't connote a certain distance?"

That one took him by surprise. A bit of pink appeared in his cheeks, and he lowered his head for a few seconds. Finally, he said, in a very soft voice, "It wasn't intended that way, sir." As that last word echoed in the tiny office, he bit his lip and grimaced, then he turned it smoothly to his own advantage. He met Gideon's eyes with a wry grin and said, "I don't wind up under the scrutiny of a living legend every day, sir."

_Ohh, good god, yes – this boy is just as slick as snot._

"This is a high stress, high-intensity division, and the hours are brutal," Gideon said. "We have more turnover than most of the other sections of the Bureau. What assurances can you give me that you won't fold under pressure and waste the time and resources it will take to complete your training?"

That eyebrow again. "Sir, I'm also ambitious. High turnover provides more opportunities for early promotions." He drew a breath and backed down a little on the intensity, but maintained that aura of directness and candor. "By the time I left Albany, I was handling all the RICO cases in the region. I understand frustration and risk and impossible hours. I don't back down and I don't give up."

"Your father was an attorney."

"Yes, sir. Defense attorney in Richmond, Virginia."

"Did you ever consider the defense side of the aisle?"

"No, sir." His face was almost unreadable – to anyone but Jason Gideon. To him it was obvious that Hotchner had some major daddy-issues. Upholding the law was his avenue of rebellion.

"Tell me about your wife."

"Her name's Haley, she's sixteen months younger than I am. We met in high school but it didn't really take off until college. We've been married now for four years."

"Do you have any pictures?"

"Certainly." Hotchner reached into his jacket and withdrew his billfold. He opened it up to two pictures. One was a candid shot of a delicate, sophisticated blonde with almost-almond eyes glowing in a sweet, somewhat feline little face.

The other picture had clearly been intended as a formal portrait of the couple, Aaron in black tie and his goofy hair, and Haley in a shimmering scarlet gown with a black velvet choker, one diamond-encircled ruby at her throat. What made the effect so enchanting was that their eyes tracked toward each other's, rather than toward the camera, and they both looked as if they had been laughing before and were about to laugh again.

A devastatingly beautiful couple, and the fact that they had chosen that particular shot, rather than one more serious and traditional, spoke volumes about their relationship.

"What's her family like?"

"Her father's retired Richmond homicide. Her mother's a middle-school principal."

"Any plans for children?"

"Not at this time, sir. Maybe someday down the road, but we're still establishing ourselves and our lives. Looking for a little stability."

_He probably doesn't want children. His wife definitely doesn't want children._

_Good god. All this, and daddy-issues, too._

_He's bound to wash out, but I have to give him a try. I just have to._


	2. Wind Chill Factor

**Act One**

**It's All Context**

**Scene II: Wind Chill Factor**

_Aaron Hotchner_

February 1998

Seven of them, all males, occupied a 16 by 22 foot room, windowless and ugly, not much bigger than a three-car garage. It smelled of leather, sweat, coffee, pine-scented cleaner, and the most recent coat of glossy green paint slapped on its nicotine-stained concrete block walls. The room had been bigger, but Rossi's and Gideon's minuscule offices had been carved out of one end of it.

Outside the door, in three-quarter-inch white plastic letters on a felt board like those used to list office building occupants or post church hymns, were listed the last names of the current agents, from the most to the least senior: Gideon, Rossi, Franklin, Cassidy, Klein, Wainwright, Miller, Samuelson, Hotchner.

Aaron always checked the names when he arrived. After two months, he was still the new kid in Behavioral, and the hazing went on pretty much continually. He had changed his name back from Hot Shot, Hot Shit, Bitchner, Crotchner, Crotchnoid, Hotchnoid, and his personal favorite, Hotchnerd, so often that he had a nice collection of little plastic letters in his top left-hand drawer.

On this particular Tuesday morning, Aaron was listed accurately. He turned the knob and entered the large and cluttered room where those without offices sat at desks arranged almost haphazardly. They shared that limited space with work tables, filing cabinets, fax machines, two copiers, a coffee pot, a microwave, and a small fridge. Crab-walking was a critical survival skill in this environment.

Against the wall stood a half-dozen rolling blackboards. Real blackboards. Blackboards so old that they were actually black, although here they were near the dawn of the twenty-first century, and green had been the industry standard since the late 1950s.

Their computers were a bewildering collection of obsolete and incompatible hardware and software: PCs, Amigas, Apples, Radio Shack CoCos, even a Trash-80. The Powers That Be were not inclined to replace them until the Big Move, at which time they were promising that they would re-equip every office with the latest machines and programs, all bought in bulk.

_Your tax dollars at work._

_Eventually._

"Aaron," David Rossi said as he strolled in. Second in command of this little band, Rossi had an engaging grin, remarkable instincts, a mournful droopy mustache, and expensive tastes. Rumor had it that he had wangled himself a hell of a book contract and he might be moving on one of these days. Rossi had taught several of the classes Aaron had taken before he entered full-time FBI training, and he was absurdly fond of the smooth-talking womanizer.

Aaron nodded at him as he hung up his coat. "Morning, sir."

"Did you get a chance to look at those search warrants yet?"

"Yes, sir. They're on your desk, in your inbox."

"Jesus," Rossi said, "don't you have a life, Aaron?"

Aaron seated himself at the most awkwardly-located desk (everything but bathroom breaks seemed to be seniority-based around there) and carefully pried the top off his Styrofoam coffee container. "They were well organized already," he said. "They just needed a tweak here and there."

Rossi snagged the chair belonging to Samuelson, who was as territorial as only a second-from-the-bottom agent in a strictly vertical hierarchy can be – _oh, that will not turn out well if he shows up any time soon_ – and dragged it over beside Aaron's desk.

In a conspiratorial voice, although they were the only two people present, he said, "Did you bring your go bag?"

Hotchner's eyes narrowed. "Of course. It's in the trunk of my car."

"Rumor has it you might be bound for Sioux Falls."

Although the climate of vindictiveness so feared in J. Edgar Hoover's day was decades past, there were still persistent whispers about disciplinary transfers. Hotchner's heart seemed to stop for a second or two before he realized that Rossi was talking about going for an on-site consultation.

"Me personally, or some Behavioral Sciences people?"

"You personally, Hot Shot."

"That doesn't make any sense. I've been here nine weeks. There's stuff in the fridge in the break corner that's been here longer than I have." He felt a dimple peeking out and struggled ferociously to contain it. [Wisdom from Aaron's mom: _You can have dimples or you can have credibility. Take your pick_.] "How would _you_ like to be outranked by a jar of mustard?"

Rossi roared. "Jeez, kid, there's shit in that fridge that's been around here longer than _I've _been here! But, yeah, I heard Jason on the phone last night arranging flight details."

_Wait a minute, I heard something about Sioux Falls on the radio this morning; now what the hell was it?_

"–Don't envy you, kid," Rossi was saying. "I heard on the way in that it's twenty below up there. Wind chill's heading down toward something like minus-fifty."

_Right. Crap. Why can't somebody need us in Malibu? No wonder he went with the most junior agent._

"So what do you think of Gideon?" Rossi inquired casually, as though it were all part of the same continuum of conversation: _Go bag, Sioux Falls, Jason Gideon. Uh-huh. Yup._

Aaron considered that question thoughtfully, aware of the powerful love-hate relationship between the two men – the only kind of relationship possible between such gifted minds and colossal egos. "Surprisingly intuitive," he began. "Almost like _Rainman_ in some ways. Comes very quickly to a confident and detailed interpretation. On the other hand," he continued, weighing his words with care, "because his analysis isn't constructed along a logical progression, when it goes wrong, it can be difficult to determine where the error crept in."

Rossi nodded approvingly. "Ever considered the diplomatic corps, kid?"

"Nope," Aaron replied. "I prefer my blacks black and my whites white. And I'm actually older than two of the other guys here, Wainwright and Samuelson, so any old time you want to drop the 'kid' crap–"

"Age-wise. Only thing that matters here is how long you've been with the Bureau, and you're what? Eight months? Nine? You're gonna be the baby here for a long, long time."

That was true. The next youngest agent in terms of service was Wainwright, with five _years_ under his belt.

"Agent Hotchner," Gideon's voice called from the outer doorway. "Call that pretty wife of yours and tell her that you'll be in South Dakota for the next couple days. And meet me upstairs with your go bag in fifteen minutes. We're due at Reagan by ten."

"Told ya," Rossi murmured. He rose and replaced Samuelson's chair where it belonged.

"Yes, sir," Aaron said to Gideon. And maybe to Rossi; he wasn't sure that it mattered.

Three minutes later, he was on the phone to Haley, who had just arrived at her own office. "Hey, sweet thing," he breathed. "This is Willie Nelson." Which had long been the Hotchners' code for _On the road again_.

"Oh, hey," she purred back. "Been a long time since I've heard from you. At the moment, you're talking to Johnny Paycheck." Code for _Take this job and shove it_.

"Wind chill's supposed to be minus fifty, so I'll be Johnny Paycheck, too, before too long. Or Nanook of the North."

"Where are they sending you? To interview penguins?"

"Ooh, she's quick this morning! No, honey, Sioux Falls, South Dakota."

"Yuck. The penguins would probably be more fun. Back before the weekend? We have that thing with the–"

"They're saying a couple days. Until I'm told otherwise, I'm taking that literally."

"I love you, Aaron," Haley said, her voice warm and seductive. "Take care, be safe, and don't come back as a Hotch-sicle. Or _with_ one."

He could think of a few things he'd like to say in response to that, but Samuelson and Kline had entered the room, and he preferred to keep his married life to himself. The guys had more than enough ammunition on him already. "I'll try my best. I love you, too."

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

Four hours later, flying south of Chicago, Aaron peered out the window at the tidily laid-out suburbs below them. Gideon had barely glanced up from the files he was studying. He certainly had not troubled to share them with his traveling companion.

"Anything to drink, gentlemen?" the attendant inquired.

"Bloody Mary," Gideon grunted. "Extra Tabasco if it it's not that pre-mixed crap. Aaron?"

All right, apparently they weren't on the clock. Maybe it didn't really matter if he just sat there and twiddled his thumbs. "Jack Black and water, please."

"Certainly, sir. And the Bloody Mary is a mix, sir," she said to Jason, "but we have Tabasco up at the station."

"Sounds perfect, sweetheart," Gideon told her.

"Agent Gideon," Aaron said quietly after she had moved to the next row of seats, "exactly what is my role in whatever's going on in Sioux Falls?"

"Stage dressing," Gideon replied, his eyes again riveted to a file.

"I'm sorry?"

"The locals get nervous when it's just some guy from Washington spouting his opinions," he said without looking up. "It gives them more confidence if they feel that there's a team effort going on. It's your job to provide the illusion of a team."

Startled and a little pissed off, Hotchner said, "I'm your straight-man?"

Attention still elsewhere, Gideon chuckled. "Not at all, son. No lines required of you. More like a chair or a potted plant, I'd say."

"That makes me feel _so_ much better."

"Glad to hear it," Gideon said, missing – or more likely, ignoring – the sarcasm.

A few minutes later, when the attendant returned with their drinks, Gideon paid for both of them. Then he closed the file and sipped his Bloody Mary with satisfaction. "So tell me again why you didn't want to be a defense attorney."

Hotchner probably downed his bourbon a little faster than was polite. "No interest in it."

"And why would that be, son? A robust defense is one of our most important protections against tyranny. The world needs defense lawyers."

Aaron shrugged. "The world also needs dentists and industrial engineers, and I don't want to do those jobs, either."

"You just want to put away the bad guys?"

"I'm not sure it's as simple as that, sir, but I'm a lot more interested in representing the victims than I am in representing the perps."

"It's probably just as well that your father isn't around," Gideon said. "I imagine he would have been pretty disappointed at your attitude."

Aaron pasted a casual expression on his face, but Gideon's callousness had literally left him breathless for a few seconds. "That would have been his problem," he replied at last, as evenly as he could manage, "and not mine. I'm not his clone."

_Not my problem because I learned long before I hit puberty that I was constitutionally incapable of pleasing the old man, so I – Just. Gave. Up._

'Well done," Gideon said with unexpected warmth and approval. "Very well done, _indeed_, son." He patted Hotchner's knee. "Forgive me for pushing you, but some of the UNSUBs we'll run across are going to be natural masters at profiling and pushing buttons. The sooner I'm sure that they won't get inside your head, the sooner I'll have you running interviews for me. Let me buy you another drink."

"Thank you," Aaron said dully. Did Gideon really think that the world of organized crime was somehow blessedly free of sociopaths and manipulators and professionals at the art of the mindfuck? If so, he needed to get out a little bit more often.

_Potted plant, my ass._

Without any further commentary, Gideon began outlining the case they were coming to consult on: the disappearance of a young widow's infant son. It sounded tragic, but the suspected truth was far more horrific. Rather than take notes, Aaron listened both to what Jason said and what he didn't say. Even one-on-one, Gideon was a spellbinder, weaving together strands of fact and picking out the awkward knots for further study.

"Now think about that for a few minutes," he directed at last, handing Aaron his second Jack Daniels and settling back to enjoy his own second Bloody Mary. "I'm interested in what kind of proactive move you come up with."

Hotchner did consider the facts, but he also stopped to wonder that, mere months after finishing his FBI training, he was sitting next to one of the Bureau's legends, one of the men who defined the art and science of profiling. Jason Gideon was buying him drinks and encouraging him to reason out not a profile, but the next, the more important step: the correct actions to take once you had the profile.

"It would work better coming from local law enforcement," he began hesitantly, "but it should be some kind of statement about how whoever did this will experience a loss of control and possibly begin to act irrationally–"

Gideon's cool hand patted the back of Hotchner's own. "Very well considered, son," he said. "And why would it be better coming from the locals, rather than from us?"

_Why, indeed?_ On an instinctive level he was sure it would be better received from the local authorities. Now he needed to back-analyze himself for the answer. "It sounds more like something commonplace, something that most people already know," he hazarded. "It's not what these uppity DC types are saying. It's plain common sense – or it sounds like it.

"Ms Dawson feels that she has reason to mistrust highly-educated people. She would be more inclined to believe locals, and especially African-American locals, and in particular, older, black female local authorities, than some typical white-male Bureau hired gun."

"Go on, son," Gideon urged, barely breathing. "Take it all the way home."

"Folk wisdom," Aaron stammered. "It would be best if it sounded almost like folk wisdom. Old wives' tales. Like something any experienced mother would already be thinking."

Gideon squeezed his hand briefly before reaching up to close the folder on his lap. "Agent Hotchner, you are _way_ ahead of your class."

The freaking dimple popped out. "Not bad for a potted plant, huh?"

"Nope," Gideon chuckled. "Not bad at all."

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

In spite of extra hats, gloves, and scarves showered on them by the locals, both agents sprinted when out of doors, because the wind and cold were bone-chilling and literally breath-taking. Gideon insisted whenever he entered a building on taking a few minutes in the men's room to run his fingers under warm water until he could feel their tips again. Hotchner was usually standing right beside him with a warm paper towel held to his nose.

"Look at this," Gideon growled. "Thirty thousand years of civilization and technology, and we're still in the dark ages when confronted with weather. Supersonic flight, the Internet, heart and lung transplants, and us: Agent Chill-fingers and Aaron the Red-nosed Profiler."

"I wouldn't mind the red so much if it didn't run, too."

"Cold wet nose is supposed to mean you're healthy, son." Gideon began warbling out in a high, clear, all too audible-throughout-the-building tenor to the tune of an old James Bond movie, "_Cold Finger, _he's the man, the man with the–"

"Sir? Sometimes you embarrass me."

"You're a kid, Hotchner! Kids are always humiliated around their folks – or parent figures. And blow your nose."

_Huh_.

He hadn't actually thought of Gideon as a father figure. One father had been more than enough for him. Now he realized that not only was Gideon acting like a father – like a TV or movie dad, actually, and not like Aaron's own – but he was also calling Hotchner "son" rather often, a name that usually sent him into silent frenzies of resentment.

_Why isn't it bothering me from him?_

They made their case – compellingly – with the locals, who put a sweet, motherly looking African American vice cop in front of the microphones to say the piece they had prepared for her. As Hotchner watched her, he thought the only thing that might have been more persuasive might have been a voodoo queen.

_De chicken bones, dey tell da truf. You kill dat baby boy!_

Which was, when you came right down to it, all they were doing. Spinning tales to scare a woman into making mistakes, into getting careless about covering her tracks.

Now, everyone would sit back and see what happened next. Gideon and Hotchner would stay only one more day, helping to fine-tune interrogation techniques for if and when the locals managed to get Ms Dawson in for an interview, and making suggestions on the best ways to draw up the search warrants.

After dinner, Jason Gideon went out with some of the senior locals to drink and swap tales of good guys versus bad guys.

Even if Hotchner had been invited – and he had not – he would have preferred to stay in the hotel room he and Gideon were to share. He made voluminous notes, watched the local media coverage of the Dawson Baby coverage, and spent some quality time on the phone with his wife. When they told people that they were _Old Hands_ at being separated when Aaron was in some other city tracking a bad guy, they were as often as not making a secret reference to their expertise at phone sex. They had raised it to an art form.

When he and Haley had reduced each other to sleepy nonsense, and when there was nothing job related left to do, Aaron had a couple drinks from room service and turned in. The much senior agent came in later. Aaron barely heard him undress, shower, and climb into bed.

He woke up in the night with an unaccustomed weight on his bed. Part of what bothered him was that the weight was behind him. He and Haley habitually slept on their left sides, with him behind her, spooning into her curves.

"Relax," Gideon's voice told him before he could fly into a panic. "Just me."

Jason's right hand touched his right arm just below the sleeve of his tee. "I know that you think about me," he whispered. "It's all right, everyone wonders." His fingers traced tiny circles on Aaron's biceps.

Hotchner's first thought was, _I must have been talking in my sleep_, but he was generally a light sleeper and he tended to wake himself up if he started running his mouth. And if he didn't, Haley would elbow him a few seconds later.

"I wonder about you, too," Jason said. His hand slid down Aaron's upper arm to his elbow, then to his waist. Aaron felt Gideon's warm breath against the back of his neck.

It was hard to tell what scared him the most: the come-on in the night, the fact that he was the least senior and Jason the most senior man on the team, or that a part of him wanted to know what would happen if he took that step.

_Or is this just another of his weird-ass tests?_

"I'm married," he finally whispered. It said everything and nothing.

Gideon's hand brushed his chest. His fingers lit a trail of fire along the waistband of his shorts. "That's fine," he whispered back. "I was just asking."

His hand was gone, and in a few seconds, the alien weight left his bed.

In the morning, Gideon acted perfectly normal. Hotchner's most intense scrutiny could detect no sign that Jason was looking at – or thinking about – him.

He wondered whether he had dreamed it.

Then word came, first on the phone, then on local and national news, that Nycora Dawson had been intercepted in the early hours of the morning, headed In her roommate's car toward the the largest of the local parks, with the body of her murdered baby son stuffed into a pillow case beside her on the front seat.

I helped push her into doing that, Aaron realized with a warm rush of accomplishment. He sat at the foot of his bed with coffee and a room service omelet watching the news – it even made CNN – and thinking, _Yes. I'm making a difference_,

His possible late-night encounter with Gideon was all but forgotten.


	3. The Potted Plant Speaks

**Author's Notes: All the names of agents and true crime writers mentioned in the first five paragraphs of this story are real people with the exception of Max Ryan, David Rossi and Jason Gideon. Their names are used (without permission) to create an ambiance of reality. None of these people will appear in this story, or in any other story I write.**

**I have really dropped the ball on my multi-chapter stuff lately, and I'm aware of that. Been involved in some highly distracting personal stuff that makes it hard to keep all the balls in the air with dozens of chapters and casts of thousands, so I've been concentrating on some of those little humorous ficlets. I see light at the end of the tunnel now, and I should be getting more on track with the multis day by day. Thank you for your patience!**

**I thank all of you who take the trouble to write a review or to favorite or alert one of my stories. You light up my life!**

**~ Kitty**

**Act I**

**It's All Context**

**Scene III: The Potted Plant Speaks**

_Jason Gideon_

April, 1998

Max-goddamn-Ryan was on the _Today_ show that morning, yapping about one of the books that were coming out, documenting the Andrew Cunanan killing spree from the previous year. At least this one wasn't actually by Ryan. It was by one of those myriad true crime writers who had oozed from the woodwork since Ann Rule took the literary form crafted by Truman Capote and Vincent Bugliosi and made it into a cash cow.

At least Rule could write. And she had been a cop. And she worked with the Behavioral Sciences and Threat Assessment people. She was good folks; a pro.

A lot of these dudes and dudessess – they were just goddamn jackals, churning out words and killing trees. Turning a profit over the bodies of slain innocents and the private grief of their survivors.

Sometimes, Jason felt old.

Felt that life had somehow passed him by, that all of his gifts and all of his promise were doomed to be lost, buried in the swill that the glory-hunters churned up. John Douglas. Richard Ressler. Max Ryan. Roy Hazelwood. And now, apparently, David Rossi was about to join the ranks of ex-FBI celebrities.

_And, damn it, I'm a better profiler than any of them._

The telephone rang. He peered at the readout on the little box by the phone.

His ex-wife.

_Nope. Not ready for that._

He finished his espresso and left the house.

On the drive, he wondered what had become of his status as Behavioral Sciences' Golden Boy. Yeah, the Geezers had been there first, but he had been the fastest and the most accurate, the one who didn't have to puzzle the little details out – they would just drop into his lap: The UNSUB you seek is in his mid-thirties, left-handed, subscribes to _Atlantic Monthly_ (OK, not that detailed). ...

One potential accolade still remained for him, and he was now courting it assiduously. He would be the genius who discovered and mentored the most gifted of the new generation of FBI profilers. Jimmy Franklin. Jay Wainwright. Aaron Hotchner.

Well, maybe not Jimmy. His star had shone brightly, but he was showing signs of burnout. He would come back from the field and it would come out eventually that Wainwright had been carrying all the water for him.

Wainwright. Sharp guy, endlessly intuitive. Not quite enough handles on him, though. In the end he would go his own way. Nobody would recognize the effort Jason Gideon had devoted to bringing him along, to helping him be all that he could be.

Hotchner. Good lord, there was a potentially perfect gift to the Bureau. Almost as intuitive as Wainwright, better grasp of the legal end of it than Franklin. A work ethic that put Rossi and Kline to shame.

And desperate – _starved_ – for approval from a father figure.

That last was his most important quality, because as he ascended to the heights, Aaron Hotchner would need to be aware in every moment of every day to whom he ultimately owed his success. His Dudley Do-right background would ensure that he always ceded the credit to his creator, and a combination of reward and control would guarantee that he knew exactly who that creator was.

He was as punctilious in his outward appearance as any Hoover-era agent, and so proper that some of his office-mates had begun calling him The Suit, Mr. Wonderful, and Brownie Boy. So hard-working that he generally beat Jason to the office and often was the last to leave.

And when Jason approached him in the night, Aaron had not moved.

Had not flown out of the bed in a panic, naked but for his socks and wristwatch, like Jim Franklin, for whom Gideon had had to act as though he had merely stumbled into the wrong bed in his exhaustion.

Had not turned and shoved him an arm's length away and confronted him angrily like Jay Wainwright, for whom Gideon had been required to act as though he had been dreaming of his ex-wife.

No. He had lain there as still and tremulous as a baby bird, and finally whimpered, "I'm married."

If when it came to actual field work he was as good as his performance to date seemed to indicate, Aaron Hotchner might very likely be The One.

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

And damned if there wasn't a chance to explore that area of inquiry before noon that very day.

Gideon left his office and surveyed the available bodies. A limited field: Miller, who was still up to his elbows in prep for a road class he would be assisting Rossi with; Cassidy, who was a huge disappointment, and whom Jason and Rossi had tasked with their big pre-Move inventory; and Aaron Hotchner, hunkered down with a printout from FindLaw and two books of Florida case law, checking over suggestions for the prosecution of a Tallahassee case.

"Aaron," Gideon said.

Intense dark eyes met his. "Sir?"

"I need a potted plant. Grab your go bag, call your wife, and meet me upstairs in twenty minutes. We'll be in Iowa for three to five days."

Freaking eager beaver was already on his feet before Jason was done talking.

_Yes. A perfect choice._

Two hours later, as the USAir flight left the tarmac at Reagan, Gideon stretched his legs as much as coach class permitted and gazed out of the window. Hotchner had requested the aisle seat so he could keep plugging away at the Florida thing – being a south-paw, he had to watch where his elbows went when he was in a narrow space like economy seats on a plane. At least he had photocopied the relevant sections of the law books he had been consulting. If he had insisted on bringing the actual damn books on the plane, there would have been heated words.

"Thought about the case yet?" he asked.

"A little," Aaron responded, frowning as his pencil hesitated over a word.

"Care to share your wisdom?"

Hotchner eyed him sideways and grinned. "Wisdom from the potted plant, huh?"

"I'll take it anywhere I can find it."

Aaron leaned back and closed his eyes. "The re-dressing indicates remorse. Five weeks is a reasonable cooling-off period. The Thompson boy was probably his first. And that would also account for the trouble he had strangling him – lack of experience. He knew both of the victims and they knew him. He has a position of authority in the community. They went along with him willingly. I'm guessing a teacher or other school personnel, maybe a church group, youth group, Four-H, FFA, Boy Scouts. Mid-thirties to mid-forties, and I think probably on the upper end of that range. Married, no children. Recently disappointed in some major life area."

Gideon's eyes glittered."Not too bad. Have they already interviewed him?"

"They may have, but only for normal evidentiary reasons: He knows the families or he lives in the neighborhood or he has been seen near the dump sites, or he owns property out there, He hasn't tried to insert himself into the investigation. This is about him and them. It's not about him against local law, or him against us."

Gideon patted Aaron's right hand. "As potted plants go, son, you obviously are starting to know what you're doing."

His subordinate's cheeks pinked up a little as he mumbled his thanks. Jason just loved that little streak of shyness he sometimes found in the otherwise confident professional.

It was – OK, it was cute.

"Not bad at all," Gideon added. "You have an eye for sorting things out of context."

Aaron smiled. "Haley's undergrad degree was in literature. Every time I try to argue that something is out of context, she gives me the evil eye and says, 'Don't give me that crap, Hotch. It's all context.'"

"'Hotch,' huh? Is that what she calls you?"

_The Dreaded Dimple of Death._

"That was what I mostly got called in high school and college, yeah."

Gideon perked up. "Really! And do you prefer it to 'Aaron'?"

An unexpectedly serious sigh and a nod. "Yes," he said finally. "I do."

And Jason Gideon was as sure as sure could be that Hotchner really hated his first name, and that one of the biggest reasons, if not the only reason, was that his father had called him Aaron. Within minutes of meeting him, Gideon had been sure that the young agent had been emotionally neglected by his father. Over the past four months he had become increasingly sure that there had also been psychological and physical abuse involved.

Jason had checked up on the reputation of the now-deceased elder Hotchner: He had been ferocious in court, a flamboyant, handsome, hard-drinking, shamelessly womanizing bastard. Tales circulated of covered-up records of multiple domestic disturbance calls to the Hotchners' so-pretty-on-the-outside Richmond home. Rumors circulated that the later-life son, born when Aaron was sixteen, had been the mother's last-ditch attempt to win back the loyalty of her husband.

"'Hotch,'" Gideon repeated. "I like it. It's almost Hot Shot, but not quite."

The Hotch in question seemed not to notice. He was chewing on his pencil and glaring at a passage on one of his photocopies again.

Relaxing was not among Aaron Hotchner's more notable abilities.

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

The crisis arose late that same afternoon, when they took a detour to talk to Elmo Chase, a former Four-H leader who lived on a small farm not far outside Waverly. The intent of the visit was to ask him about the current leader, a somewhat theatrical gentleman who styled himself Cochise Battles.

What they found on the Chase farm, however, was a tired-looking woman in her late forties who had two grown daughters by her first husband. Her current mate, Mr. Chase, was 42, and fighting a deep depression brought on by his failure to derive any profit from some agricultural inventions he had developed. He spent most of his time in a detached "den" he had created out of an old chicken coop.

Dusk had fallen as Gideon and Hotchner followed the path from the house to the den and knocked on the door. Their breath came out in puffs of smoke.

"Who is it?" Elmo Chase called out.

"Agents Gideon and Hotchner," Jason called back. "We're with the FBI. We're talking to people in the area about the situation with the Thompson boy and the Schuller boy."

"Come on in," Chase said.

There was a faint beep as though something electronic had been engaged.

They did not enter stupidly. From their bare two or three minutes with Mrs. Chase they had already determined that her husband fit the parameters of their UNSUB quite well. Gideon reached for the latch, ordered Aaron to stay back and let him do the talking, and opened the door.

A sad-looking man with thinning tan hair and washed-out tan eyes, a man old before his time, sat in an old-fashioned rocking chair, one foot propped on an oversizes upholstered ottoman. He had a shotgun across his lap. One trembling hand rubbed along its surface as though he were polishing it. The other raised something that Gideon feared might be a handgun, but it was only a small remote device.

There was another beep.

"Got to keep the old lady out," Chase explained in his tired voice. "Man's got to have his privacy."

"I understand," Gideon said, his eyes quickly taking in and interpreting what he saw before him.

"She's afraid I'm gonna kill myself," Chase confided. "She's afraid I might feel like less of a man."

Gideon turned slightly sideways so he could ease his Sig Sauer out of its holster. Although Chase did not seem like much of a threat, with every passing minute he looked and sounded more like their UNSUB, and that shotgun might well be all loaded up and ready for Chase to use to blow his own brains out.

"Could I trouble you to put the shotgun down?" Gideon asked. "We just want to talk."

"It's just sitting there."

"Nevertheless, Mr. Chase, I'd feel a lot better and–"

Almost too fast to register, the shotgun flew up and Chase leveled it not at Gideon, but at Aaron Hotchner. "Don't think that I care about what you feel," the man said in a voice that seemed near tears. "Put the damn pistol down right there on that table, or I'll blow a hole through your big-city pal here."

Gideon calculated how much time he would have to take a shot at Chase without putting Aaron at risk.

"It's all right," Aaron said in a calm and quiet voice. "Just put it down, sir. Mr. Chase isn't going to hurt me."

_Told you to let me do the talking_, Gideon thought. But he didn't say it aloud. Once Aaron chose to open his mouth, it was of utmost importance that Gideon do nothing to detract from Hotchner's credibility. And since it was Hotchner's chest Elmo Chase targeted, it was certainly his call to speak.

He raised the Sig high, then carefully set it down the way he had been told. In a pinch, he could probably get to it and take out Chase before he could fire a second shot. And If Aaron – if _Hotch_ – could duck the first blast, there was a way out of this for both of them.

_Don't fuck this up, Hotch._

"You don't want to shoot me," Hotchner told Chase, keeping his hands open and in plain sight. "And you don't really want to shoot yourself, either. You don't want people to talk about you forever after as that monster or that weirdo or that crazy guy.

"They don't understand what you were doing," he continued. "Same as the Thompson boy. You thought he understood that what you were doing was your way of showing him that you cared about him, showing him how the world worked. And when he got scared, when he started to threaten to tell on you, you did the only thing you could do.

"I know that it was hard for you," he continued, that velvet baritone as hypnotic as Jason had suspected it might be. "You never meant any harm to him, and here he was, a snot-nosed kid, threatening your life, your reputation – because he misunderstood what you were trying to do. I know you hated to do it. I know how it hurt while you were dressing him, carrying him out there, trying to cover him up with leaves, because the woods are still so cold this time of year.

"And I know how you hoped and prayed that it would be better with Carey Schuller. But it was just more of the same. Mr. Chase, if you kill yourself, nobody will ever know what was really going on. And if you kill me, Agent Gideon will kill you, and you will not only be the monster who killed the boys, but the damn fool who killed the federal agent.

"You have a good woman there, Mr. Chase, and good friends in the community. You owe it to yourself not to end it all like this."

Hotchner took another step and Gideon was surprised, because he had not noticed the other two steps at all.

"May I sit down, Mr. Chase?" Aaron asked.

The man's brow furrowed with suspicion, but he nodded.

"Thank you." Hotch leaned forward with exquisite care and pulled the ottoman a couple feet toward him, then sat down, inches from the barrels of the shotgun, his head perhaps a foot lower than Chase's, his knees touching the older man's. He kept his hands raised and his eyes on Chase's face. Once, the muzzle of the shotgun brushed the front of his shirt and he seemed not even to notice it.

"I want to help you," he told Chase. "So does Agent Gideon. We've seen a lot of people who do bad things. Some of them are bad people. Some of them – well, we understand what the real problem is. That's what we do. That's our job with the FBI. We're profilers. We understand people.

"I want you to have a chance to explain to people – to the world – what was really going on in your mind. How you meant no harm to those boys.

"Will you allow us to help you, Mr. Chase? Will you hand me that shotgun and let Agent Gideon and me help you to get the truth out there?"

One of those fifteen-second eternities passed.

Elmo Chase raised the barrels of the shotgun toward the ceiling and handed it vertically to Agent Hotchner, who kept the connection going. Even after the weapon was totally in his grasp, he said in that same calm voice, "Thank you, Mr. Chase. I'm going to stand up now. I'll remove the shells and put the gun on those shelves over there. Is that OK?"

Chase nodded.

Gideon could hardly breathe.

Hotchner did what he said he would do.

"All right, Mr. Chase, we'll have to take you in. You know that, don't you?"

Another nod.

"I'm going to ask you to stand up now so Agent Gideon can put the cuffs on you. It's the law, I'm sure you know that. And if you have any questions, you just feel free to ask them. I don't want you to be afraid of anything that's going on."

"My pap was military police in 'Nam," Chase said. "I know there's rules."

"Exactly," Hotch said soothingly. "Now, will you turn around, please?"

Surprised that he was able to breathe and move, Jason Gideon moved forward and handcuffed the man.

"You done good," Chase told Gideon gruffly. "You treated me like a human being."

"We try," Jason replied.

_Oh, yes, I do believe this boy may be The One._


	4. Fear of Failure

**This is the end of Act One. I won't start posting Act Two, "Does Not Play Well With Others," until I've got myself caught up with the case fic I have currently running, "Scrambling for Altitude." I'm also committed to picking up my poor abandoned AU fantasy, "Caller of the Living," again.**

**A chunk of this scene is shamelessly lifted from my previous one-shot story, "Fourth Time For Everything" but with a slightly different emphasis.**

**A thousand thanks to all of you who review or alert or favorite my stories. You light up my life and kick start my muse!**

**~ Kitty**

**Act One**

**It's All Context**

**Scene IV: Fear of Failure**

_Aaron Hotchner_

April 1998

Same day

"Are you sure that you're all right?" Gideon asked him for the fifth or sixth time since they returned to their motel on the edge of town.

"Positive," he lied for the fifth or sixth time. It was easier to lie than it was to deal with the confusing fact that in the heat of confrontation, his fear had not been for his life, but that he might screw up the case somehow and make Elmo Chase impossible to prosecute.

Now, with Chase safely in jail, he was suddenly all too aware of the danger he had been in. He saw into the depths of those over-and-under barrels, felt the muzzle brush against his chest. He read the nothing-else-to-lose pain in their UNSUB's pale eyes.

As he lay on his bed in his shirtsleeves, the perspiration prickled at his forehead. He kept his hands laced behind his head to disguise the tremors in his fingers. Beneath his shirt, his tee clung damply to his torso.

"It's always unsettling the first time," Gideon said.

Aaron made a neutral noise, then backtracked, confused. "_What's_ unsettling the first time?"

"Having a gun aimed at you."

"Oh," he said. "Wasn't my first, though."

"Wasn't your first what?"

_We're not doing very well at communicating, are we?_

"Wasn't the first time somebody's held a gun on me. Was the, ah–" _Oh, come on, idiot, how many times was it? _"Fourth time."

Gideon made a sound composed half of surprise, half amusement. "That must be some kind of record for a young attorney. Except for maybe those TV lawyers who are always running around and doing all their own investigations."

Aaron stared at the ceiling. "Wasn't like that. Guy with PTSD I was trying to represent took me hostage trying to bargain his way out of a court martial back in JAG Corps. Then there were – stupid threats from a couple mobsters. Nothing as intense as today. Just waving a handgun around."

Actually, there was only one stupid threat, from a little fuckup of a small-fry mobster in an alley. Aaron had looked him in the eye and said, "Jesus, Federici, don't piss me off," and the poor guy had shoved the .22 back down into his pants and scuttled away.

The other occasion – the first occasion – had been when he was thirteen. He could no longer remember exactly what started it, not that it ever took much to get the old man started even on a good day. His dad had ordered him to kneel down by his bed. He'd held his .38 Police Special right at the base of Aaron's brain and told him to say his prayers, because he was going to die. His mother had stood in the doorway, wringing her hands and weeping and repeating, _You know that he really doesn't mean it, baby. Just go along with him. Got to go along to get along, Aaron. Come on, just say your prayers. Say, "Now I lay me down to sleep" or something. It's all going to be all right. Just do what he says, will you, please, honey? Come on, please, baby, you know he doesn't mean it_.

And Aaron knelt there with his hands folded and realized that his father did in fact mean it, and that when the gun went off, his mother would insist to the police that it had been an accident because nothing was ever the old man's fault, and he was going to die there at thirteen with his brains splattered across his Star Wars down comforter, and he could not think of a single thing that he wanted to say to God.

Not a fucking word.

"Come on, Aaron," Jason Gideon said gently. "You're wound up awfully tight and you're grinding your teeth. Smell this." He waved a dark red vinyl bottle under Hotchner's nose. Something aromatic with hints of citrus and clove teased at his nostrils. "Skin lotion. It warms up your muscles. I get it sent to me by a friend in Haifa," he said. "Fabulous stuff. Let me give you a back rub."

He considered the offer from several angles, including the one that included the issue of that weird Jason-in-my-bed thing from February in Sioux Falls.

"OK," he said finally. "Thanks."

"Shirt off," Gideon directed.

Aaron sat up and removed his tie, his dress shirt, and his tee. He glanced once at Jason to see whether there was anything peculiar about the way Gideon looked at him, but his boss was occupied rolling up his own sleeves, removing his watch, and squeezing a daub of the lotion into the palm of his right hand.

"Turn over. You can put the pillow right across like this – and your head and neck will be more comfy. Arms down at your sides. How's that?"

"It's good. It's–" Lotion-covered fingers began to stroke his shoulders and the back of his neck. Whatever was in the stuff, it really was wonderful, both heating and stimulating. "Oh, nice," he breathed, and that was the last coherent thing he said for the better part of half an hour. Gideon's hands, alternately soothing his muscles and driving his thumbs deep into the knots of tension he found, quickly reduced him to sighing and groaning into the edge of the pillow.

When he was done, Aaron had no interest in moving. He felt like a puddle of of warmth and contentment. Gideon pressed his tee shirt into one of his hands and told him to put it on to retain the heat on his back and shoulders. Hotch fumbled with it and managed to pull his head and arms through the right holes, but when he realized he had it on inside out and backwards, he couldn't work up enough ambition to put it on properly.

"I'm going out for a bit," Gideon said. "Going to catch up with a couple friends. Can I bring you anything when I come back?"

He made a negative sound. "I'm OK," he mumbled. "Just want ... nap."

"Do that," Jason said. "It'll do you good." He snapped off the light as he left the room. "Sleep well."

"Mmmf."

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

He awakened at around ten, bought a couple cans of soda from the vending machines, turned on the TV, and missed Haley. She was unavailable, attending some work-related team-building horseshit thing in Silver Spring on Monday and Tuesday. He wouldn't have seen her even if he had been at home.

He could have used a little phone sex. Although more than five hours had passed since he faced down Elmo Chase, he still had that urge-to-merge feeling common to many people who had just faced death, and masturbation wouldn't cut it. It wasn't just the release. It was an intimacy thing.

He could almost hear his divinely silly wife say, "Hey, go to back to sleep. Maybe you'll get lucky and Gideon will join you again." Of course, he hadn't said a word to her about the Jason thing, he was probably as straight as any man he knew, and Haley would only say it because she was outrageous.

Hell, he couldn't even tell her about the Elmo Chase incident. Even the Jimmy-Federici-in-a-dim-alley thing had upset her so severely that she had cried for days. As the daughter of a policeman, she had seen her mother kissing her father goodbye every day and never knowing whether he would return home alive from his shift. If Aaron hadn't assured her that the Behavioral Sciences people were consultants, a step removed from the actual work of investigation, she never would have agreed to the career change.

God, he missed her!

Eventually, he stripped down to his boxers and climbed into his bed. He thought he would have trouble getting back to sleep, but whatever magic was in that lotion was still at work. He was out within minutes.

The room was dark and silent, and he had no idea what the time was when he again felt the weight pattern shift on the mattress. He hardly dared to breathe and he had no idea what he would do, what he would say – but he knew that he was not entirely unhappy at this turn of events.

Again, the warm, familiar hand on his upper arm. "You're thinking about me," Gideon whispered. "I can tell."

The imp side of Hotchner wanted to say _Of course I'm thinking of you, you're in my bed_, but instead he tried to master his thundering heart. He licked his lips and said, "Yes."

"Good," Jason said. "I've been thinking about you, too."

Instead of sliding down his arm, Gideon's fingers crept up, into his sleeve, up toward his shoulder. Having Jason's hand under his clothing and touching him was a significantly different thing from Jason massaging his bare shoulders and back. It was – covert.

Illicit.

Arousing.

Jason settled himself behind Hotch, his fingers exploring only his arm and shoulder, his warm breath against his neck. Neither of them said a word, nor did either attempt to move closer.

After a while, the fingers slid back down his arm, along his waist. Slipped under his tee and gently explored Aaron's chest, swirling the patches of hair around his nipples, tracing his ribs. Aaron bit his lip; he would no longer be able to hide his wildly thudding heartbeat from Gideon. He didn't mean to make a sound, but he did, a faint whimper that was half apprehension, half anticipation.

He shivered slightly as Jason's lips touched the back of his neck.

"This is a first time for you, isn't it?"

"Yes," he managed to breathe. Well, there had been the standard experimentations of boyhood – at summer camp, in the woods. Not much of it was mutual in nature, though. Mostly "every man for himself."

"Don't be afraid," Jason whispered. "Everything will be fine."

Hotch thought of Haley, thought of his vows, thought of his responsibilities, his career, his reputation. Told himself he had to stop this, now.

Gideon's hand played along his stomach and traced the waistband of his shorts.

"What do you want from me?" Aaron managed to breathe.

"Just to touch you. Shush. Everything will be fine."

A confident hand brushed gently across the front of his boxers and he hissed as, through the fabric, Gideon's fingers made the briefest possible contact with the erection that made a lie out of any protest he would dare to make.

"You liked that?"

"Mmm." It was all he could manage now.

Gideon scooted still closer, so close that even through his tee, Aaron felt that dense cloud of fur on Jason's chest against his back.

Gideon had been reaching around Aaron's arm, but now he lifted it slightly so it rested on his own. His fingers crept down the front of Aaron's boxers again and slid into the fly opening.

Hotch cried out involuntarily, so tense, so anxious, that he was beyond words.

He was long past his teen years. It was embarrassing how quickly, how unexpectedly, those gentle adventuring fingers brought him to a climax. He leaned back against Gideon, panting, fighting to get his breath back.

Jason gave a low chuckle and kissed the back of his neck. "Wait right here," he said.

_What have I done? What did I let him do?_

Gideon returned from the bathroom with a warm wash cloth. Still in the dark, he cleaned Aaron up. Then he pressed a kiss to his forehead. "You're beautiful, Aaron," he said. "Sleep well."

And he was gone, back to his own bed and very soon asleep, his breathing slow and even.

Aaron lay awake for he had no idea how long, curled up almost fetally, reliving each touch, each tingle, each shiver, like an adolescent girl reliving her first kiss. And, like an adolescent girl, he found himself wondering whether Gideon would lose interest in him now that Aaron had ceded control to him. Like the boys who lose interest in a girl after she puts out.

These thoughts, these fears, did nothing to reassure him.

**Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ**

Gideon seemed capable of acting as if nothing had happened. For the first few hours of the next day, Hotchner found it profoundly difficult to meet his superior's gaze or answer him coherently. He stammered, lost his place, and generally felt like a fool. Part of it was embarrassment at violating his marital vows. Part of it was a fear that rocked him to his core when he finally identified it: He was afraid that now that Gideon had had his way, he wouldn't want him anymore.

_Don't be an ass, Aaron. He's a profiler. He knew that you had – needs last night. He had them too. It worked out to everyone's benefit. Don't make it into something that it's not._

After dinner, he returned to the motel and reviewed some data again, then went for a long walk, only turning back when it started to rain.

He returned to the room to find Gideon showered and in his usual pajama bottoms – the man apparently never wore a shirt to bed - sitting in an armchair and reading the newspaper. "Glad you're back," he said. "You're wet."

Aaron nodded idiotically. "It's raining."

Gideon looked at him over his half-glasses. "That would do it."

He hung his suit to dry and took a long, hot shower. He considered a long cold shower, but, hell, there was no reason for Gideon to visit him again: he had already identified Aaron for what he really was, an unfaithful, spineless man with premature ejaculation problems.

_Fuck it. You're taking this much too seriously._

He dried his hair and put on his shirt and boxers.

When he returned to the cool air of the room, Gideon was sitting up in bed, reading the sports section. His bedside lamp was the only illumination in the room. He set the paper aside and smiled at Aaron. He patted the mattress beside him and said, "Come here."

It was weird. As Aaron stared at his superior and realized that he was going to go to Jason, whatever the man had in mind, a little part of him died – and a little part of him came to life.

_I can't figure this out._

The distance between the bathroom door and Jason's side seemed insurmountable. He put one foot in front of another, another, another, scarcely breathing.

"Sit down."

Aaron sat down sideways, facing Gideon. He made himself meet the man's gaze. Jason drew the covers back and said, "Come on in."

He slid in tentatively under the sheets. As before, he was on the left, Gideon on the right. Unfamiliar orientation. Imbalance of power.

Jason lay back on his pillow. "Aaron, will you please kiss me?"

Aaron half-sat up, leaning on his elbow. It was different with a light on, with his eyes open, with no possible wiggle room to pretend it hadn't happened.

He touched the lined face, the noble nose, the deeply furrowed brow of the man upon whom his career success depended. This gifted man who apparently considered him a worthy partner, perhaps even successor.

"Stop," Gideon said. "I see it in your eyes. You can stand up and walk away now, and it will change nothing between us. Aaron, you're a fine agent – more potential in a new man than I've seen in years, and I'm proud to call you my friend. Your success is not, and will never be, contingent on–" He waved a hand vaguely. "On this. Don't do it if you–"

Impulsively Aaron shut him up with a kiss on the mouth, firm, determined. Committed. And, eh, a little clumsy. When he pulled back, Gideon's eyes glowed.

"Ohh," he breathed. "Oh, my goodness, Aaron." He read Aaron's face with his fingers. "So beautiful."

Aaron bent again, still a little shy and thrown off by how different Gideon's mouth was from Haley's, but willing to learn. Jason stroked his cheekbones. He tangled the fingers of his left hand into Gideon's thick chest hair. Both of them gave a little, their lips parting. No tongues – just a little bit of surrender on both sides.

He rested his brow against Gideon's. "I'm in new territory here. I have no idea what to do."

"What do you want to do?"

_Christ, how do I answer that one?_

"I don't know," he confessed. "I – I know some things I don't want to do, things I don't want to – to be done to me–"

_God, you're pathetic, Hotchner._

"Shush." Gideon's voice was gentle and understanding. He rolled to his left side."Then let's just stick with what we know, shall we? Lie back down, Aaron, and relax. No, turn around and face me."

He obeyed with a nervous laugh. "You make me sound braver than I am."

Gideon chuckled. "Which part of _Shush_ weren't you clear on? Here – I think I recall that you like – oh, yes you do! You definitely like that!" Aaron gasped, stiffened, and reached out reflexively for Gideon's hip. Once his hand was there, once his chief had reduced him to hushed moans of need, he gathered his courage and let his fingers slide down to the (frankly, a little scary) protrusion in Gideon's pajamas.

Gideon's eyes widened and he gave a long sigh. "Ohh, now, you see – you've already learned something new, and, oh, my." He paused to catch his breath. "You – I must say, you show great promise."

Glimpsing a return to a balance of power, Aaron slipped his fingers into the fly of Jason's pajamas. Watching him wince and arch at his touch was impossibly exciting, empowering. It made his own body quiver, made the fear dissipate.

"Hotch," Jason murmured huskily, "a little ... faster ... a little ... " A harsh cry, and the division head was convulsing against his hand, teeth gritted, face contorted, his thrusts rapidly growing arrhythmic. The sight of all that power and brilliance out of control as a result of his own ministrations sent him over the edge himself with a strangled scream.

Only later, as he drifted back to sleep in his own bed, did he realize that what he had cried had been, "Help me!"


End file.
